Squidoo marketing requires lens masters to recognize certain opportunities that will help them increase profits to their direct and affiliate links. Many lens masters mistakenly believe they are capitalizing on Squidoo marketing opportunities, but later find out that they’ve missed a few things. There are five major Squidoo marketing mistakes that you should avoid at all costs if you want your lens crafting to be successful.
First, you have to use your tags properly with your Squidoo marketing efforts. It all begins when you choose the URL for your lens. You want to make sure that your tag, or prime keyword, is in the URL name. Check to ensure that you’ve spelled your tags properly, because you won’t be able to change the URL at a later date.
As you create your lens based around Squidoo marketing opportunities, you want to ensure that your keywords, or tags, are listed in every title and subtitle within the lens. This includes poll modules, guestbook modules, and every other module on your lens. The content that you put on your lens needs to have your keywords woven throughout. Don’t engage in keyword stuffing if you want your Squidoo marketing efforts to unfold nicely.
When Squidoo was first launched, it was important to add relevant keywords to your tag list. However, beginning January 1, 2008, Squidoo implemented nofollow codes to their tag pages. This means that when you add the available 40 tags to your lenses, it only serves to help with the inner Squidoo searches, not search engines such as Google.
The second Squidoo marketing mistake that you need to avoid is in not utilizing your hyperlinking opportunities. Some people simply put banner ads at the bottom of their text modules. Don’t forget other areas where you can hyperlink text that goes to your websites or points to your affiliate links, such as your My Bio section.
You can also use basic HTML code to create hyperlinks in your text modules, including your introduction module. Another little-known place that you can use a hyperlink is in the description section of money modules such as Amazon and eBay.
If you use a poll module, then you have unlimited linking opportunities. For example, you can ask a question such as, “What is the best e-book on affiliate marketing?” Then, each of your poll response options can be hyperlinked to a particular e-book using your affiliate link. Both before and after the visitor takes the poll, they will be able to click through on the link. If they choose one option, and then see that the majority of visitors chose a different option, they may be influenced to go and buy that product.
The third Squidoo marketing mistake that you want to avoid is in not joining groups on Squidoo. This is a social networking site, and as such, that means that you need to participate in the community. But joining groups serves a dual purpose.
While tag pages have a nofollow code implemented on them, group pages do not. They earn their own individual PageRank on Google, just as your lenses do. It’s better to start your own group and encourage people to join, but it’s also beneficial to expose your lens links on existing group pages.
Not promoting traffic to your lens is the fourth Squidoo marketing mistake everyone should avoid. Many people believe that once they create their lens, adding content and images, their work is done. But this isn’t true.
It’s your responsibility to send targeted traffic to your lens and help it build a reputation in the search engines. You can do this by using social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, e-mail your list about it, write an article and submit it to a directory with your lens link in your resource section, and blog about it to help it get picked up and entered into the Google spider rotation.
Lastly, you want to avoid the Squidoo marketing mistake of not updating your lens regularly. You don’t have to log in daily to make major changes to your Squidoo lens content. What you need to do is log in every once in awhile and freshen up the content — even if it’s in a minor manner.
One good way to do this is to check your traffic stats for the lens and see how people are finding your lens. You may discover that they’re entering questions into Google and landing on your lens, but it’s a question that you haven’t yet answered in your lens content. This provides you the perfect Squidoo marketing opportunity to provide a solution to their problems.
If you can steer clear of these five Squidoo marketing mistakes, your lens crafting will be more successful. Be sure to test and tweak your lens content so that it performs to the best of its ability. Take time to make sure that your hyperlinks are all working. Polish your lens and your visitors will appreciate your expertise and authority — which is boosted by the clean layout Squidoo lenses have to offer.
If you would rather utilize expert lens masters to build your lens instead of having to navigate the rules yourself, you can visit http://www.BuildMyLens.com and but a single or 4-pack lens package. Tiffany Dow and Lewis Smile, two lens masters who have been awarded Giant Squid status, have built hundreds of lenses for Internet marketers. You get original content by a top ghostwriter paired with images, as well as bookmarking to help your traffic get a jumpstart. You also get a lens master cheat sheet to help you maintain your professionally-created lens from that point on.
The most common question I see about Squidoo is how to make money on the site. There are so many ways to profit on this Web 2.0 site, but I wanted to go over the primary ones for you today.
The first thing you have to understand about making money on Squidoo is that your content counts the most. For a brick-and-mortar store, it’s all about location, location, location. Your Squidoo lens has one primary purpose: to educate your visitor.
A side effect of their visit, it you may earn money in one of the following ways:
1. Squidoo ad revenue — Squidoo has implemented a system where they get to keep the site free free you and still earn money at the same time, allowing you to profit in the process. At first, everyone rebelled against the Google ads and other advertising methods that were placed on their lenses. What I have found is that I make a bit of that money, but it’s not the bulk of my profitability on Squidoo.
2. Affiliate marketing money — 1 of the best perks of placing your content on Squidoo is that they openly allow you to have affiliate links. I despise the way hub pages cracks down on how many links you can have going to which site. I feel that should be a decision the creator of the page makes. Squidoo doesn’t care if you link to ClickBank, Share a Sale, PayDotCom or any other affiliate program. You can even make lenses that do nothing but review existing products.
3. Direct product sales — have you written your own e-book? Do you have private-label writes articles to sell? Are you selling items on eBay, or your own website? Then Squidoo can help you amp up your direct product sales. One of the first things I do what I have a new e-book or articles that ready for my PLR Mini Mart is create a lens about it. I get indexed quickly and Google, and I start to see that my lens is being found for important keywords.
4. Freelance service cash — know how I got my start on Squidoo? I was actually showcasing my ghostwriting skills to prospective clients. When I hit the $10,000 mark, I realized there was a lot of profit potential in the site for other means, not just freelance advertising.
5. Sell space on your lens — lenses on Squidoo have their own page rank in Google, which is very important. If you have a lens that has a page rank of four or above, you may be able to sell a spot on your lens to offer a back link to a hungry marketer in your niche.
6. Sell off your lens for cold, hard cash — in my book Flip That Lens, I teach people how to create Squidoo lenses for hungry niche marketers, and then flip them for immediate profits.
There are many ways to profit from Squidoo — but first you have to learn how to use the system. If you don’t yet have it, I highly suggest you invest in a resource that teaches you the Squidoo ropes. Squidoo now has an Answer Deck, which is a user compiled page that lists all of the helpful lenses for new lensmasters.
However, most of the lensmasters are not in the same type of marketing realm that you are. They may be happy with the money they make on Squidoo, but it may not be a full-time job to them, or they may despise marketing altogether.
In my book, Social Networking on Squidoo, you’ll learn exactly how to set up a Squidoo lens from scratch, along with the strategic elements that you need to know to help perform to its best ability in your niche.
Have questions about Squidoo? Ask me and I’ll answer them here!
Most of us blog about something. But affiliate WordPress blogs are becoming more routine now, with the sole purpose of generating cash and informing visitors about a niche topic.
I created a lens about what it means to operate one of these types of blogs. Check it out:
I created my Top Toddler Toys lens on Squidoo and it’s going magnificently! So far, in the past 7 days, it’s earned $74.58 in direct links to Amazon and another $20+ via Squidoo co-op modules, like the built-in Amazon or eBay modules.
I’ve discovered people are buying way more through text links than they do product image links. I don’t know why. Maybe they feel like a text link will just give more information, so they click it without feeling the pressure to spend money. With a product link, you have a Buy button and the retail amount posted right there.
I like them anyway. I use the product links that Amazon helps you build on my blog entries, but for my Squidoo lenses, since you can no longer use iFrames, I use SquidUtils to build the same thing. These are great because they give you built-in images for your lens, and I hate lenses that are nothing but text!
Yesterday, my toddler lens sold some direct co-op module products, but from my direct link I sold a LeapFrog ClickStart My First Computer, a Calico Critters NORWOOD MOUSE TWINS, and a Hasbro Playskool Mr. Potato Head Pirate Kit. It only earned $3.25 yesterday, but another day this week, I earned over $50!
Guess it just depends on who lands on your lens, and ya gotta love those consumers who buy a PlayStation 3 through your link!
tiff
This doesn’t include the sales it made from Amazon modules within the lens itself - these are the direct affiliate commissions I earned through my own text links.
Questions? Comments?
Remember - you can link to any page within Amazon, like a search page where you’ve searched for “toddler toys” - so that your visitors gets multiple opportunities - see how I did this in the introduction section on my Top Toddler Toys lens.
A client asked me to make a video about putting Amazon products into the lens, so here it is - using text-based links and the Buy Button image via SquidUtils.com.
Any more questions, post them and I’ll answer
Tiff
